In the plex : how Google thinks, works, and shapes our lives

Written with full cooperation from top management at Google, this is the story behind the most successful and admired technology company of our time. Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? The author, a technology reporter was granted access to the company, and in this book he takes readers inside Google headquarters, the Googleplex to show how Google works. While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google's earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow (until Google's IPO nobody other than Google management had any idea how lucrative the company's ad business was), Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more. The key to Google's success in all these businesses, the author reveals, is its engineering mind set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers, free food and dry cleaning, on site doctors and masseuses, and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire. But has Google lost its innovative edge? It stumbled badly in China, and the author discloses what went wrong and how Brin disagreed with his peers on the China strategy. And now with its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete?続きを読む

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詳細

The world according to Google: biography of a search engine --
Googlenomics: cracking the code on internet profits --
Don't be evil: how Google built its culture --
Google's cloud: building data centers that hold everything ever written --
Outside the box: the Google phone company and the Google TV company --
GuGe: Google's moral dilemma in China --
Google.gov: is what's good for Google, good for government or the public? --
Chasing taillights.

概要：

Written by Steven Levy, In the Plex is the story of the most successful technology company of our time, it is an inside look at how Google succeeds.続きを読む

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"Dense, driven examination of the pioneering search engine that changed the face of the Internet. Thoroughly versed in technology reporting, Wired senior writer Levy deliberates at great length about online behemoth Google and creatively documents the company's genesis from a 'feisty start-up to a market-dominating giant.' The author capably describes Google's founders, Stanford grads Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as sharp, user-focused and steadfastly intent on 'organizing all the world's information.' Levy traces how Google's intricately developed, intrepid beginnings and gradual ascent over a competitive marketplace birthed an advertising-fueled 'money machine' (especially following its IPO in 2004), and he follows the expansion and operation of the company's liberal work campus ('Googleplex') and its distinctively selective hiring process (Page still signs off on every new hire). The author was afforded an opportunity to observe the company's operations, development, culture and advertising model from within the infrastructure for two years with full managerial cooperation. From there, he performed hundreds of interviews with past and current employees and discovered the type of 'creative disorganization' that can either make or break a business. Though clearly in awe of Google's crowning significance, Levy evenhandedly notes the company's more glaring deficiencies, like the 2004 cyber-attack that forced the removal of the search engine from mainland China, a decision vehemently unsupported by co-founder Brin. Though the author offers plenty of well-known information, it's his catbird-seat vantage point that really gets to the good stuff. Outstanding reportage delivered in the upbeat, informative fashion for which Levy is well known." --"Kirkus Reviews" (starred review)続きを読む

"Written with full cooperation from top management at Google, this is the story behind the most successful and admired technology company of our time. Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? The author, a technology reporter was granted access to the company, and in this book he takes readers inside Google headquarters, the Googleplex to show how Google works. While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google's earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow (until Google's IPO nobody other than Google management had any idea how lucrative the company's ad business was), Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more. The key to Google's success in all these businesses, the author reveals, is its engineering mind set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers, free food and dry cleaning, on site doctors and masseuses, and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire. But has Google lost its innovative edge? It stumbled badly in China, and the author discloses what went wrong and how Brin disagreed with his peers on the China strategy. And now with its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete?"@en